World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE SKIES: Plans for Punishment

Bubbly, jocular General of the Army Henry H. Arnold dropped in on Guam to hunt up parking space for some of his 12,000 European combat airplanes, and prepared to realign air force commands for the big Pacific push. While 520 of his Twentieth Air Force B-29 Superfortresses bombed shuddering Osaka for the fifth time, proud Hap Arnold outlined to correspondents the kind of punishment U.S. airmen planned for Japan.

Said the U.S. Army Air Forces chief: Superfortresses, backed by Liberators, would deliver bombs to Japan at the rate of 2,000,000 tons a year. “We are going to do the same thing to industrial Japan that we did to industrial Germany. … It requires the complete and utter destruction of these industrial areas and that is what we will do. … Japan will be a terrible place to live in … [but] if Japan wants it, by God, she’s going to get it.”*

Major General Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the Marianas Superforts, gave more details: “Yokohama is gone, Nagoya is no longer a worthwhile target. Kobe is gone. Soon we’ll be striking smaller cities in the 100,000-population class.” Osaka had had it, and only ten square miles of Tokyo’s 60-sq. mi. industrial area was left intact—one year after the first B-29 raid on Japan. Unlike Germany, Japan lacks the time, technicians and industrial savvy to rebuild ruined factories quickly. Said General LeMay: “It is just a matter of time before we get everything of value in Japan.”

Army Air Forces revealed a little more about LeMay’s power by identifying four wings of B-29s in his command, two on Tinian, one each on Saipan and Guam. The young brigadier generals in his all-star backfield are Roger M. Ramey, 58th Wing; Emmett (“Rosie”) O’Donnell Jr., 73rd; John H. Davies, 313th; Thomas S. Power, 314th.

* For a cooler view of “bombed-out” German industry, see INTERNATIONAL.